Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] FQDNs or Not ? [recommendations please]

2006-05-02 14:31:16
Subject: [Veritas-bu] FQDNs or Not ? [recommendations please]
From: David Rock <dave-bu AT graniteweb DOT com> (David Rock)
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 13:31:16 -0500
* Rockey Reed <rockey_reed AT symantec DOT com> [2006-05-01 05:37]:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> > [mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Ed 
> > Wilts
> > Yes.  Not just for for NetBackup, but in general, use FQDN whenever
> > possible.
> >  
> In this area I cannot help but to disagree with Ed, for whom I have
> great respect.  The use of FQDN is used too often to mask a poor DNS
> configuration.  With NBU you need full forward and reverse lookup.  When
> either is missing a short term solution would be the use of /etc/hosts
> files until your network team can fix the DNS by adding the servers IP
> address to both zones.

This sounds like an argument FOR using DNS, not against it. :-)

Don't forget, the question was about using FQDN, _not_ using DNS.  Which
way you implement it doesn't really matter (although generally that DOES
mean using DNS).

Basically, using FQDN is a good idea because it creates genuinely
unique client names in NetBackup.  Without this, you run a real risk of
having two client short names that are the same.  You might not see this
in a single-company, single-site environment, but it is a real danger in
multi-customer or multi-site environments.  How many exchange1 servers
are out there, I wonder?
Imagine in an outsourcing situation where you have to tell client B that
the name of their server will have to change because client A got there
first (exchange servers don't like having a NBU client name that is
different from their real name).

The ONLY downside I have come across when using FQDN is when you work
heavily in the CLI.  It does get tiresome when typing a long FQDN on the
commandline to do a bplist or some other activity, but knowing the
clients are unique helps a lot.  This can also be mitigated quite a bit
with scripting and other looping activities off of bpplclients, anyway.

-- 
David Rock
david AT graniteweb DOT com